(Traducción de Julio Payró) Adaptado y puesto al día por Ismael Bucich Escobar, estudios de Joaquín V. González, prólogo de Ricardo Levene.
Historia de San Martín y de la emancipación sudamericana:
Mitre began to work on the biography of San Martín right after ending his presidency.[4] He wrote his initial project to Mariano Balcarce: he wanted to write two books, "History of San Martín" from 1812 to 1822, from San Martín's arrival to Buenos Aires to the Guayaquil conference, and "The ostracism and apotheosis of General San Martín", with his life afterwards.[5] Balcarce sent him the personal documents of San Martín in Europe for his work. (…)The second projected volume, with the life of San Martín after his military career, was never written. Historian Norberto Galasso considers that his late life was full of events that would contradict the portrait of San Martín by Mitre: his rivalry with Rivadavia, his rejection of the execution of Manuel Dorrego and his conflict with Juan Lavalle, his support to Juan Manuel de Rosas (including the gift of his sword), and his repudiation to the French and Anglo-French blockades and the role of the unitarians in them.[7] The book was finally edited in 1887.
William Pilling (1834-?) The Forgotten Author:
Strange how someone that did so much in Argentina has been forgotten, even to the extent that he does not figure in the many lists of residents in Argentina in the 19th Century.
(…)
On the 29th of November 1890 William returns to Buenos Aires from Southampton on the ship Wordsworth. Again the date coincides with the publication of his book, as noted above, by Chapman & Hall in that year. During his time in London he wrote a short letter to Bartolome Mitre requesting his permission to publish in English a précis of the two volume edition of his Life of San Martin. The original letter, written on the letter head of a London hotel in Gower Street, is held in the Mitre Museum, Calle S. Martin, Buenos Aires. The letter is written in a familiar style, which suggests that he knew, personally, Mitre. The book appeared under the title The Emancipation of South America, being a condensed translation by William Pilling of The History of San Martin by General Don Bartolome Mitre, first constitutional president of the Argentine Republic, London, Chapman & Hall, Ltd. 1893. Copies of the printed sheets of this book were shipped to Buenos Aires, Mitchell's bookshop trimmed and bound the books locally and sold them in Argentina, with the title page unchanged. The hard back binding was of the same colour as that of the London edition, with the addition of Mitchells Buenos Aires noted on the base of the spine, there was no change to the title page as issued, still remaining at 1893. With trimming the book is smaller, in height and width, than the London edition. A tribute to William by the Academia de la Historia was their choice of his translation of Bartolome Mitre to be used by the Academia to open their new series of books Hombres Representativos de la Historia Argentina, and a translation into Spanish by Julio Payro was arranged by them, and the edition by the Academia appeared in 1943, it was subsequently given a second edition by Espasa-Calpe in 1950, Año del Libertador General San Martin. It was also re-published in English by Cooper Square Publishers, Incorporated, New York, in 1969.
